As the popularity of the Internet has increased, so have the complexity of the services available on the Internet. Much of the Internet's use is conducted through the World Wide Web, hereinafter referred to as “WWW,” or simply the “Web,” in which linked pages of static content, composed of a variety of media, such as text, images, audio, and video, are described using hypertext markup language (HTML)
As businesses began to conduct transactions via the Web, they developed Internet-based applications. Typically, these applications were powered by web application servers which dynamically generated HTML documents from server-side programming logic. These applications were written in programming languages such as Java™.
The popularity of conducting transactions over the Web has led to an increasing demand for businesses to integrate their Internet applications with Internet applications of other businesses. However, these Internet applications are often implemented using proprietary software written in differing programming languages.
One known solution for integrating heterogeneous Internet-based services introduced the concept of a “Web service”, which is defined as one or more application functions which can be programmatically invoked over the Internet using a protocol. One such standard protocol is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) which is used by Internet-based application servers (also known as Web servers) running Web services.
SOAP is a protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. The protocol is based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and consists of three parts: (i) an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it; (ii) a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types; and (iii) a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.
In addition to using a common communication protocol, an application must have certain information in order to programmatically invoke a Web service over the Internet. This information is defined in a standard language adopted by developers of Internet-based applications. One such language is the Web services Description Language (WSDL). WSDL documents can be indexed in searchable Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Business Registries to permit developers and applications to locate target Web services.
One known SOAP implementation which allows developers to build Web services is a software product offered by the Apache XML Project. However, the Apache software can be cumbersome to use, reducing a software developer's ability to efficiently deploy and test a Web service.
Another known solution for integrating heterogeneous Web services is a framework provided by Microsoft .NET. However, the .NET framework is a closed implementation which cannot be extended by developers.
Accordingly there is a need for an open and extendable Web service framework which improves developer productivity by reducing the time required to deploy a Web service. In addition, there is a need for an open and extendable Web services framework which is compatible with HTTP requests.